


All the Soft Places to Fall

by srmiller



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bellarke, Canon Compliant, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post Season 3, basically someone being there for bellamy for once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 20:55:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8815978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/srmiller/pseuds/srmiller
Summary: Post Season 3, Clarke learns that while Bellamy said “try that hanging upside down” with a laugh he went through his own kind of hell while she was gone and she tries to step up and be the friend she should have been then, by being there for him now





	

Clarke approached Bellamy carefully, which was maybe a little stupid and absurd after everything they’d been through together, but she didn’t feel like it was her place anymore to take the empty seat beside him.

He was sitting on a bench someone had pulled out onto one of the balconies of the tower at Polis. They would be trapped for another day at least. Food and were water were being brought by a pully system they didn’t trust to transport people just yet.

There was too much to do, too many people to take care of and too much work to get the elevators working again, to do anything more than sleep, eat, and repeat. But somewhere in the chaos and the bloodshed Miller had grabbed her, pulled her into an empty room and told her the pieces of Bellamy’s story Clarke hadn’t known about.

She still felt a little dazed, a little sick to her stomach at all the things she hadn’t known Bellamy had lived through while she hadn’t there.

It was easy enough to recognize the feeling as guilt, but it was a different kind than the one she’d long since learned to deal with. This was the kind of guilt which stemmed from selfishness. She’d been so wrapped up in her world and her pain and her mission she had never stopped to question the new scars on Bellamy’s skin and on his heart.

She was a shit friend and it was about time she make an effort to change that.

“It’s a hell of a view.”

Bellamy looked up at her voice beside him, his focus had been locked on that far off horizon so he hadn’t even heard her approach.

“Yeah.”

Clarke shifted awkwardly on her feet, suddenly feeling claustrophobic in the grounder gear she still war. Following instinct she pulled off the pointless corset, the heavy jacket, and Bellamy watched without question as dropped them both on the ground.

“Been wondering if you were still underneath all that.”

“I think so,” she answered honestly. “Can I?” she asked as she gestured to the minuscule space of wood to his right.

He looked down and seemed to think about it before sliding over and giving her enough space to sit down beside him.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, fingers twisting with nerves. “I just...I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

He looked at her sharply, the setting sun throwing his face into sharp relief. “What? Why?”

“For a lot of things, but right now I’m sorry for not asking what happened in the past three months.”

Bellamy swore as he pushed himself off the bench, stopping at he stone railing and bracing himself on it.

“Who spilled?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Clarke assured him as she stood up to stand beside him. Something she should have been doing all along. But she didn’t touch him, didn’t take those kind of liberties when once she’d thrown herself into his arms. “What matters is I know and...and sorry can’t begin to make it better.”

“What all do you know?” he asked, and his voice was harsh but since his face was still tilted down she couldn’t see from his expression exactly what he was feeling.

“I know more about Mount Weather than I did before.” She reached out to touch his shoulder but stopped at the last moment and pulled her hand back. “You didn’t tell me, Bellamy. ‘Try doing that hanging upside down?’ You were tortured.”

He looked at her then, something painful and vulnerable in his eyes even as his jaw was set in a hard line. “I don’t think-”

She did touch him now, stepping forward to lay a hand on his bicep. “You were tortured,” she repeated. “I want to say I can’t believe you didn’t tell me, but I can. All those times I yelled at you over the radios, begged you to do what needed to be done and you were probably still bleeding from the needles they put in your arms.”

Over the leather of his jackets her hand slid down to the curve of his elbow, her thumb pressing against the place she thought they’d have drawn his blood.

“You knew,” he reminded her and his voice was rough.

“I knew they’d tried to draw your blood, and when you said the thing about trying it upside down it didn’t click for me. I knew, but I didn’t understand and that’s not even the half of it.”

“Someone’s been chatty,” he accused as he glared at the open archway as if he could somehow scold the person from a distance.

“Someone cares about you,” she corrected. “A lot of people do, Bellamy.”

With a sigh he straightened, turned his back on the horizon and rested against the stone railing. “Why are you doing this, Clarke?”

“Because you told people what happened, but I can’t help but wonder if you’d been able to talk about what happened and there was a time that person would have been me.”

“And you want to go back to the way things were?” he asked but his voice wasn’t sharp or angry, just resigned.

“We’re trying to forgive, right? And even if it’s not me I want to know you’ve got someone-”

“I did have someone,” he cut in, glancing at her out of the corner of his eyes. “Did your informant tell you that?”

“Gina.”

“Gina,” he repeated and there was bitterness in his voice. “She died because I trusted Echo. Died in fucking Mount Weather like hundreds of other people. We keep losing people, Clarke.”

Screw it, Clarke tells herself. Screw the distance, and the time, and sheer fear of not being enough. She grabs his arm and turns him to face her and when he does she reached around his middle, steps forward and holds on.

“What are you doing?” he asks, his arms still at his side even though she’s pressed her cheek against his chest.

“Comforting you, asshole.”

She can feel him laugh as much as hear it, the rumble and vibration of it, and then his arms wrap around her shoulders before he rested his head against her temple.

“You have the nightmares?”

She doesn’t have to ask what nightmares, they share so many of the same terrible days there’s only one answer. “Yeah. All the time.”

His arms tighten around and she shifts so they’re closer together. “It fucking sucks.”

“Yeah, it does.”

They stood that way, wrapped up and protecting each other, for a solid two minutes before there was a loud crash somewhere on the other side of wall. It was enough to break the moment, Bellamy pulling back but not quite letting go.

“I want you to be able to talk to me,” Clarke told him when she looked up to meet his gaze. “I don’t care if it’s in the middle of the night or the middle of the day.

“Clarke, you’ve got enough-”

“Together,” she interrupted, the word holding just the hint of a bite. “We’re in this together and that doesn’t mean just the all the,” she waved her hand, unable to think of a way to describe the way they were when they stood together. “But for the shit as well.”

“Wow, princess, I didn’t know you cared.”

Clarke was thrown, she hadn’t heart him call her princess in months, and there was something about the tone which nearly made her ache with its familiarity, Smugness and sarcasm mixed with affection.

“Yeah, well, jokes on both of us,” she fired back with a smirk. “Because it turns out I care a whole hell of a lot. So, you come to me and I’ll come to you and we’ll go from there.”

He looked like he was going to argue but after a few seconds he nodded and finally dropped his arms from around her, taking a step back.

“I have to stuff I have to do.”

She nodded, “I have to go help my mom.”

“I’ll see you later.”

Again, Clarke nodded, her eyes following him as she stepped out of the light of the setting sun and into the shadowed room beyond.

That night she stirred at the sounds of footsteps and when she saw the shadow near the foot of her bedroll she didn’t reach for her gun. She’d recognize Bellamy in pitch black.

Wordlessly he laid out the blankets and cushion he used as a bed next to her and when he laid down Clarke rolled over to look at him in the waning moonlight.

“What was it?” she asked softly.

“Charlotte,” he answered, though the word was barely more than a breath.

Clarke reached across the few inches which separated them and covered his hand with her. “That one always gets me.”

Not saying anything else he twisted his hand in hers and they fell asleep, fingers intertwined.


End file.
